gregmag

Wow, people are making a lot of assumptions in this discussion based on very little information. Not only do we know that Weeks declined to play LF -- we also know that this reflects a bad attitude, that he's "irked" (it took that fiction like five posts to become a freaking meme), that his refusal to play LF made the team mad enough to leak the story, and that he's about to get traded. Oh, and we also know he can't square up on the ball anymore, even though he 's done exactly that two days running (small sample of course, but enough to disprove a negative). I knew some of the Weeks bashers on this board were reflexive and stubborn. I didn't know they were psychic. Here's my counter-fiction. I don't think Weeks cares much about his option. That ship sailed a long time ago. I think he's a proud, hard-working player whose recent failures, which reflect some combination of skill erosion and injury, have ground him down a lot psychologically. I think -- this one I'm pretty confident about -- that asking a veteran 2b to start playing of in the middle of the season is patently stupid. I think Rickie politely declined the stupid suggestion that he play LF, telling RR either or both of the following: (a) that probably wouldn't work out well for the team; (b) please don't crush what little remains of my confidence by setting me up to fail in a new way. To my mind, those are both perfectly fair responses. I don't know whether any of my counter-fiction is true, but it's a lot more plausible than some of the conjectures and assertions made here. The Weeks-bashing in this thread exemplifies one of the things I hate most about sports fans: too often we give guys who are playing well the benefit of every doubt while beating up in every way on guys who suck. Weeks has sucked for the better part of two years. As soon as we see the wisp of a controversy, we scream that he's a greedy, lazy, stupid bastard. We don't consider the possibility that maybe he's a good guy who has just played like crap or the possibility that maybe there's more to this story than the scrap of information we know about. Anyway, he just played a crucial role in two straight tight wins. Whatever else is or isn't going on, good for him.

That Grantland story is even nicer to Brantley, Cain, and Escobar than to the Brewers.

Also, Davis did poorly in April last year. Obviously his role then was very different, but maybe he's more of a hot-weather hitter. I like Gindl, and I'm glad he's up, but Davis has a far better track record as a hitter.

How does Wang's situation impact Rodriguez? He's the closer. His line would look exactly the same if we had someone else in Wang's place. To a lesser extent, the same thing is true of our other guys. We've had a lot of high-leverage innings en route to 20 wins. Those innings aren't going to the guy at the back of the pen, whoever he is.

I can't see how Fiers hasn't earned the first shot at the rotation when somebody has to miss time. The guy started out great two years ago, then took some lumps, then got hurt. Sounds like how a lot of great pitchers start out. Now he's putting up stupidly designed videogame numbers at AAA. Stuff, schmuff -- he gets results. I want to see if he can get them in Milwaukee.

Man, I didn't think my baseball night could get any better, but that BC box score is some cathartic stuff. Those kids are too good to stay in the funk they've been in.

I'm not as sure as some of you that trying to bunt with Overbay was stupid. Segrist, a LHP, was out there throwing 97. Overbay is generally helpless against lefties, while Reynolds, coming up behind him, gets paid to hit them. It's the 11th inning, so ordinary scruples about one-run strategies don't apply. RR played the percentages, and if his twilight-career platoon 1b can't get a bunt down, I'm not blaming the manager. Having violated my deepest principles by praising a (failed) Ron Roenicke bunt attempt, I'll now violate them even more by praising a Ron Roenicke intentional walk. Having Smith walk Holliday with one out in the seventh after Craig's triple had tied the game took nerve, and it was exactly the right move in that situation. You want Smith to face Adams there. Add me to the chorus of people who think RR is a pretty smart and thoughtful manager who has gotten better with experience. I'm still pretty critical of him at times, but I respect the work he's done to improve.

I was at Busch tonight. When I saw our lineup, I told my Cards fan friend, "If we can win this game with this lineup, we're a team of destiny." Still not sure how comfortable I am with that claim. But I'll be back out there in 12 hours -- so: If we can beat Shelby Miller in a day-following-night game to sweep a series at Busch with three injured starters, a gassed bullpen, and essentially no bench, we are definitely, absolutely, possibly a team of destiny.

3, 2, 1 . . .

I agree with the prevailing views. To summarize: Carlos is a great player. Carlos appears to be a really good guy. He's passionate; that's great. He shouldn't wig out when he gets confronted, because then he misses games and doesn't get to do his passionate, brilliant thing. The unwritten rules, in general, are moronic, hypocritical, a moral subsidy for the worst sort of people in baseball, and an embarrassment to the sport. In this particular case, Carlos did nothing that warranted a response. He looked at the ball for a split second. He thought it was gone or caught, so he jogged. When he saw it was in play, he ran. Gerrit Cole is a weasel and a crybaby. The fight was 100 percent his fault. He doesn't like losing? Good for him; he's a competitor. So don't lose. If you do lose, shut up and do your job better. Don't take out your inadequacies by jawing at the guy who beat you and then walking away like you have a moral right to be a jerk. How will you explain that to your son?

Absolutely. Gomez paused for like a split second. That fight was entirely Cole's fault. He got beat, and he handled it like a whiny child. Now, Gomez needs not to go berserk when that happens. But Cole is the jerk who made it happen. He's like Chris Carpenter without the talent.

I've basically defended the roster construction moves this year. I understand dumping Francisco. But -- especially until Khris and Jean start hitting -- about two-thirds of our position players are pushovers at the plate . . . aaaand Overbay singles, right on cue. I'll shut up now.

Everything else aside, I think the claims about Estrada's health record are a little exaggerated -- like the claim that he's proved "year after year" that he can't stay healthy as a starter. Two years ago he made 29 appearances, 23 starts. Last year he made 21 starts. Apparently he's healthy now. I'm not sure why you would assume he won't make 25 starts this year. If that's the over-under, I'll take the over.

Yeah, Braun's great and all, but I'm skeptical until he hits a home run outside Pennsylvania.

I'm a little concerned that we have several young-for-level, promising but unheralded hitting prospects getting their souls crushed in the Florida State League.

Gomez is a truly strange player. His plate discipline has improved a lot and his walk rate has improved some, but he's basically a free-swinging power hitter who also happens to have great speed on the bases and otherworldly defensive skills. Batting him leadoff just accentuates his oddness. I can't think of any other player with his collection of attributes. Mike Cameron comes closest, off the top of my head, but right now Gomez is better than Cameron ever was. The Brewers' pitching is better and deeper than most people realize. We have no world-beaters in the rotation, but we have no pushovers either, and I think we have arms in the bullpen and at AAA that would help us survive losing any two of them reasonably well. Bullpen's the same basic story: well-constructed, good collection of pitchers, but nobody who's likely to be dominant or irreplaceable over a full season. I think we'll go through stretches where we'll have trouble scoring runs. Braun, Gomez, Lucroy, and Ramirez are legitimate frontline hitters. Segura and Khris Davis are question marks, but I'm pretty confident they'll contribute. Those six are pretty much it. The 1b platoon is going to struggle, although Reynolds will contribute bombs. Many people believe Scooter Gennett will be a plus bat at 2b; I'm not one of them. The bench sucks offensively, although I think Logan Schafer will hit better than he has so far. Position-player depth is our biggest weakness. I think Caleb Gindl, currently at AAA, is probably our seventh-best MLB hitter, and I'm eccentric in still believing Taylor Green could hit at this level. After those guys, though, the show-ready pickings get truly slim.

Hard to believe it's been 27 years. Those 13 games are one of my favorite seasons, all by themselves, and the Yount catch may be the single most thrilling, cathartic moment in Brewers history. Thanks for the reminder, Clancy!

A journalist, not a fan, but today the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bernie Miklasz has a very detailed and admiring writeup on the Brewers' hot start: http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bernie-miklasz/daily-bits-why-the-brewers-are/article_5312e8a1-2f41-5f16-a414-87ad114440ac.html One of the things I like about stuff like this is that you can sometimes get a more objective sense of your own team's strengths and weaknesses.

Don't know if this has been discussed. Before the season, Fangraphs did "positional power rankings" -- rankings of projected WAR for each team at each position. They projected the Brewers' starting pitchers to rank 25th, last in the division. They projected the Brewers' relief pitchers to rank 29th, also last in the division. This seemed odd to me at the time. While I know our guys will regress some, I'm pretty sure those projections need updating.

This has to be the best day ever for the Jungmann / Bradley draft. Jungmann's K and walk totals are among the early season's most encouraging stats. As for Taylor, I knew that first week was too good to be true. Two singles and only one double? Can you say "regression to the mean"?

Fair enough. Is it wrong for me to find it odd and be disappointed that the player who played a total of 61 games last year for the Brewers and accepted a half year suspension from MLB for cheating gets a warmer reception from the fans than the player that won a gold glove and was clearly the Brewer's MVP in 2013? I know, I know, Braun needs the fans support, forgiveness, and love more than Gomez does. By that standard, Rickie Weeks should get a standing O every time he comes to the plate. If anyone needs the fans support right now it's him! Everything else aside, I get your point here, and I think you ask a great question. In fact, it's a classic question. It's the parable of the prodigal son. Is it fair to "kill the fatted calf" for Ryan Braun? I can't say. It's just what people do sometimes. Me, if I could get to Miller Park, I'd be screaming my lungs out for Rickie Weeks. He's always seemed like a good guy, he was once an excellent player, and yeah he has the money but I bet he feels like crap. So that outs me for the mush-brained softy I am, and there's nothing passive-aggressive in that confession.

Quite a few people above have made points that are at least as nuanced and sophisticated as your very thoughtful analysis. Cheer up; you aren't alone up there. IMHO, as Briggs has noted a couple of times, quite a few effective starters have cut their MLB teeth in long relief. It's the old Earl Weaver method. I think the Brewers have made a very defensible decision about their starters this year. I probably would have gone with Nelson or Thornburg in the rotation and passed on Garza. OTOH, the Brewers' approach gives you Nelson as your #6 starter and potentially Thornburg (probably after a stretching-out stint in AAA) as your #7 starter. If this team is going to have any hope of a playoff run, which right now sounds substantially less insane to me than it did two months ago, then that pitching depth is going to be a crucial comparative advantage (in part because they have very little depth among nonpitchers). I agree that we need to think about a bunch of dichotomies: this year and the future, the team and the player, money and on-field value, development and immediate performance, the rotation and the pen. There are a lot of moving parts. To me, right now, whether through smart thinking or dumb luck, the Brewers appear to have found an approach with Thornburg that navigates all those dichotomies reasonably, if not perfectly.

I love Lucroy to death, to the extent that I almost want to overpay him just because I love him. I mean, we developed him, he grew in the job, he's arguably at this moment the best catcher the Brewers have ever had, and he does things well that people didn't even know existed until he did them well. Which of course is just correlation, not causation, but who cares. But from a purely logical perspective I wouldn't extend him. Certainly not now, and maybe not at all. Like folks have said above, he's a catcher on a team-friendly contract through age 31. Historically, a lot of catchers start dropping off the table right around that age. If he turns into Johnny Bench over the next couple of seasons, then extend him. Of course that would cost a lot more than extending him now, but I think it's the right bet. Besides, if we end up backing a money truck up to his house when he's 29, I'll be smiling.

Yeah, that's exactly what was going on. Fans in Milwaukee affirmatively favor cheating and lying. They were just waiting for an opportunity to express their support for cheating and lying. I'm sure a lot of those fans considered booing other players who have reputations for honesty, but they figured the national media wouldn't understand the point of the booing. So the best they could do was stand for Braun and scream out their support for cheating and lying. I'm really glad you explained that the fans' standing ovation for Braun reflected their admiration of cheating and lying. Stupid me, I had assumed that maybe the fans stood up and cheered because their star player was back after a long suspension. I figured some of them wanted to convey forgiveness, or just support for a player who had obviously been through a difficult time, even though he brought that difficulty on himself. I thought the standing ovation might have, from some fans, sent the message that, hey, we're starting with a clean slate after you did a bad thing and did your time. Perhaps, I moronically posited, Milwaukee fans wanted to give Braun more support than he deserves because they knew fans in opposing parks were bound to give him a whole lot more abuse than he deserves. But you really set me straight, and obviously you were able to do that due to your morally superior position of nonforgiveness. Because you've chosen not to forgive Braun for his lying and cheating, anyone who chooses to forgive him must be a morally deficient advocate for cheating and lying. That is some unimpeachable logic right there, and I for one am duly ashamed of myself. Wow...relax. I think you are just have trouble accepting the fact that I am morally superior to you in every way. I figured I didn't need to put that in blue since you declined to do so in your post (unless you honestly think I was stating that people gave Bruan a standing O because he lied and cheated). Are you putting yourself in a "morally superior position" of being able to quickly forgive someone for their "bad deeds" when others can not? It's very possible that some day Braun will win my support back again. It's just going to take more time for me. That's a fair question, and the answer is no. Whether or not somebody chooses to forgive Braun, or to what extent somebody does or doesn't forgive him, is up to the individual. It's a tough call, and people other than you have made some very thoughtful arguments about why Braun doesn't deserve forgiveness. Of course, nothing I wrote suggested that I held you or anyone else blameworthy for failing to forgive Braun. That's just a strawman argument to divert attention from what you initially wrote. Now you want to deny that you claimed Braun's lying and cheating caused fans to give him a standing ovation. On one level, I don't blame you, because it's a ridiculous statement. Unfortunately, you made it, and it's right up there in black and white. Not blue.

Yeah, that's exactly what was going on. Fans in Milwaukee affirmatively favor cheating and lying. They were just waiting for an opportunity to express their support for cheating and lying. I'm sure a lot of those fans considered booing other players who have reputations for honesty, but they figured the national media wouldn't understand the point of the booing. So the best they could do was stand for Braun and scream out their support for cheating and lying. I'm really glad you explained that the fans' standing ovation for Braun reflected their admiration of cheating and lying. Stupid me, I had assumed that maybe the fans stood up and cheered because their star player was back after a long suspension. I figured some of them wanted to convey forgiveness, or just support for a player who had obviously been through a difficult time, even though he brought that difficulty on himself. I thought the standing ovation might have, from some fans, sent the message that, hey, we're starting with a clean slate after you did a bad thing and did your time. Perhaps, I moronically posited, Milwaukee fans wanted to give Braun more support than he deserves because they knew fans in opposing parks were bound to give him a whole lot more abuse than he deserves. But you really set me straight, and obviously you were able to do that due to your morally superior position of nonforgiveness. Because you've chosen not to forgive Braun for his lying and cheating, anyone who chooses to forgive him must be a morally deficient advocate for cheating and lying. That is some unimpeachable logic right there, and I for one am duly ashamed of myself.